


Lost on Some Horizon

by gamerfic



Series: Ghost stories from Kate Bush songs [3]
Category: The Man with the Child in His Eyes - Kate Bush (Song)
Genre: Don't Have to Know Canon, Dreams, Drowning, F/M, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Moving On, POV First Person, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 07:35:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6895780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gamerfic/pseuds/gamerfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody knows about my man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost on Some Horizon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thinlizzy2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinlizzy2/gifts).



I hear him before I go to sleep and focus on the day that's been. I realize he's there when I turn the light off and turn over. He waits for me on the same beach as always, standing at the fine line of lace where the waves meet the shore, his bare feet buried in the singing sand. Joy and affection blossom on his face at the sight of me. He opens his arms wide to me, and I plunge myself into his willing embrace.

Nobody knows about my man.

When James was alive, he and I were inseparable. I met him in my first class on the first day of my freshman year of high school, this sweet shy dark-eyed boy who had just moved to California. Over the course of the next three years, he would become my first everything. He might have been my last, too, if he hadn't tried to swim past the breakers at Salt Creek Beach that windy August day.

Time and the telling have made the once-rough edges of the story as smooth and clear as sea glass in my memory. James loved the ocean, loved to wade in the surf and swim beneath the foamy whitecaps to seek out rocks and shells and stranger treasures on the sandy bottom. They think he was trying to dive for something when a rip current held him under until he drowned.

I was there the day James vanished. I love the ocean from a distance; I've never been comfortable in water above my head. Instead I was content to lie on the sand and feel the warm sun as I waited for him to stride out of the shallows with his hands full of mysteries from the sea floor. I don't really remember our last conversation. I think I may have kissed him, or discussed plans to go to the movies with our friends later on that evening. Mostly I remember the drop of sweat trickling down his collarbone, the salt spray on his skin, the way his dark curly hair stuck up above the tight band of elastic that held his goggles to his forehead. I didn't find it strange to see him sink beneath the waves, and thought nothing of his absence until I saw the lifeguards pulling him, limp and pallid, back to shore.

The night after he died, when I finally slept, hollowed out and wrung dry of tears, I dreamed of him. He stood on the same shore that had ushered him to his death, and panic rose in me at the thought that I would have to watch him drown all over again. But instead of going back into the water, he gathered me up in his arms. "It's okay," he said. "I'm here now. I'm not leaving you again."

And he never did.

* * *

It took me a long time to convince myself that James wasn't just a figment of my imagination. Even now, I sometimes have a hard time believing it. And yet he was there, night after night. He spoke of things that only the two of us knew. Again and again he insisted that he had lived, that he had died, that he was still with me.

At first, I thought he was only a dream. But no dream could possibly recur night after night, or capture every nuance of the boy I had loved, or feel so real no matter how hard I tried to deny it. On those few occasions that I alluded to his presence, my friends and my family and my therapist reassured me that it was normal to dream vividly and repeatedly of someone you'd lost. Soon I stopped trying to explain how these dreams were different. I stopped trying to figure out how it might have happened and learned to live with what it was.

In truth, once I got over the initial shock, I came to enjoy our arrangement. James was the same as he had been in life: kind and clever, thoughtful and understanding. He was as confused by his circumstances as I was, but he decided quickly to embrace them. James never did like to spend much time pondering the mysteries of life. "I don't know how this happened, or what it means," he told me. "I only know I still want to be with you." Soon, I believed him.

Now, every night, I meet him in my sleep. Sometimes I'm so eager to see him that I go to bed while the sun is still high in the sky, but even if I stay up late I know he will be there waiting when I arrive. We stroll together, barefoot and hand in hand, through the whispering waves as they wash up to the coast and then recede. The sky is always the rich orange and pink of sunset, never the black of night. In the pictures I've kept of him he's always seventeen, gangly and awkward and still growing into manhood, but in my dreams he has moved gradually into maturity along with me. As we walk, he asks me to tell him everything, good and bad, about my day. No event is too mundane, no detail too minor to be shared. He'll tell me what he thinks if I ask for his opinion, but if I don't he seems just as happy to listen and react. "Why do you care so much about everything that happens to me?" I asked him once.

"I don't live in that world anymore," he told me. "The only way I can experience it is through what you tell me." He looked sad for a moment, then quickly changed the subject back to the annoying co-worker I'd been complaining about. There had never been many things I didn't tell James, but after that night, there was nothing I hid from him anymore.

I know how fortunate I am to have James in my life. I can still talk to him and touch him and feel his lips and his body against mine, even if only in dreams. There are days I wake up smiling, but there are also days I open my eyes to the pale light of dawn and feel acutely how much poorer the waking world is without him in it. There are days I wonder what it would be like to stop hiding, to tell the truth, to be believed.

* * *

I heard a lot of unsolicited advice after James died. "It won't last forever" was by far the most common platitude. Time and again, people told me that grief is real and does not leave you, but it fades with time. You learn to live with wounds you once believed were mortal. From the outside, I'm sure they would have thought I took their suggestions to heart. They couldn't know I could only carry on because of all the things I hadn't lost after all.

My sister Nicole thinks I've recovered. I sit beside her on the beach - Laguna Beach now, never Salt Creek again - as her kids toss a frisbee back and forth along the shoreline. She elbows me in the ribs to make sure I've noticed the tall, buff man in red board shorts who's emerging from the surf with rivulets of sea water slowly rolling down his sculpted chest. "Nice," she whispers.

I shrug. "I suppose."

"What, aren't you interested in men anymore?"

"I am, just...not that one."

She peers at me over her sunglasses, a predator scenting blood on the currents. "But you _are_ interested in some."

"In the right one, sure." It's not exactly a lie. I'm interested in James, after all.

"What if I introduced you to someone I know?"

I laugh, shake my head, and look back at my niece as she topples over backwards while trying to catch the frisbee far above her head. "You don't have to do that. I'm fine."

"Are you really, Roxy?" I can feel her gaze boring into the side of my head. "How much time do you spend with anyone who isn't Mom or Dad or me?"

I don't answer, because I'm not sure. I had friends in college, I guess, but that was a long time ago and we didn't really stay in touch. Since then I've cycled between work and home and sleep with dreams of James as my only real anchor. I wonder sometimes what it might be like to live as if the waking world mattered, as if it were more than just a distraction I use to pass the time. It's just that I don't know how to begin.

"There's a guy who works at the hospital with me," Nicole continues. "Adrian. He's a paramedic. I think you'd like him. I told him he'd probably like you, too."

"Nicole!"

"Chill! It's not like I promised him your hand in marriage or anything! I just mentioned that the two of you have a few things in common. And I said that if you ever wanted to text him, I would give you his number. So do you?"

I wonder what Nicole told Adrian about me, or what made her think I have anything in common with a random guy from her workplace. Maybe he's a sad shut-in like me. "How am I supposed to know? I've never even met the guy."

"That's the point of texting him, silly. You talk. You get to know him. Maybe there's a spark and you have dinner together. After that, who knows?"

My knee-jerk reaction is to tell her I can't do it. But the thought of companionship, of a real conversation with someone outside my head, tempts me more strongly than I want to admit. Even if I'm not looking for romance with someone other than James, surely he wouldn't begrudge me a new friendship? "Let me think about it."

"What are you waiting for?" Nicole huffs. "Permission?" She doesn't know how right she is.

* * *

"Nicole thinks I should go on a date," I tell James that night as we walk along the shore, my hand resting comfortably in his.

"We _are_ on a date," he says, and squeezes my fingers.

"Sure, but she doesn't know about you, remember? She means with a person who's alive. She's trying to set me up with this guy named Adrian she works with."

James chuckled. "That sounds like her. What are you going to do?"

"Honestly? I think I might text him. I mean, not because I plan on dating him. I don't. Not when I have you. It just might be nice to have a friend. I don't have very many of those when I'm awake."

James stops walking. "Is he going to understand that, though?"

"If he doesn't, I block his number and I've lost nothing." I shrug. "I just wanted to make sure you were okay with it before I sent a message. I wouldn't want to hide something like that from you."

"But you could." His voice sounds small and far away. "I can't see you when you're awake. I only know what you choose to tell me. You might have another life I don't know anything about."

 _I kind of already do._ "You know that if you were alive I'd always be with you, waking and sleeping. But you aren't. It doesn't work that way. I don't know how this works at all, to be honest. But I do know that if I don't let myself have any new experiences, I'll run out of things to talk to you about. It isn't fair to expect you to be everything to me."

"But you're my everything," he says, and my stomach drops. I know I am. That's the problem. He sighs. "In the end, it's your decision. I can't interfere even if I want to. But if you need a friend on the other side - hell, even if you need more than that - I don't care, as long as you come back to me at night. No matter what happens, I'll always be here for you. Even if nobody else is."

He puts his hands on my waist and pulls me to him, and I let him lay me down in the soft sand at the edge of the ocean. He doesn't know that I've already made my choice. I texted Adrian before I went to bed. By morning I'm sure he will have responded. The secret is heavy in my chest where James touches me, sinking like an anchor unexpectedly cut free from the vessel it once held in place, and I wonder if I should turn back now before I lose sight of land completely.

* * *

I meet up with Adrian a few weeks later at a taco joint just off the Pacific Coast Highway. He rolls up in a cab, ten minutes early, and looks surprised when he sees me sitting on a bench near the door. "Oh no, I'm late!" he says. The smile he flashes me is even wider and more brilliant in person than it is in the Snapchats he sends me.

I drop my gaze to my grimy sandals. "Sorry." The truth is, I was so nervous about our meeting - _don't call it a date! You told James it wasn't a date!_ \- that I couldn't stand to be alone in my apartment anymore.

"Please, don't apologize. I was trying to make a joke. I can see that I failed." He sits down next to me on the bench. "I'm really glad to finally meet you in person. Being early just means we have even more time to get to know each other. Wanna go inside and get some tacos?"

"Yes," I say, grateful to have something else to focus on, and I follow him through the door.

We sit down, order our food, and start to talk. It's superficial pleasantries at first, shallow chatter about Nicole and our jobs and how we spend our free time. We find out that we watch some of the same TV shows and listen to some of the same bands. The conversation continues from there. By the time the tacos arrive we're telling stories from our childhoods, and I laugh myself into a fit of hiccups as Adrian recounts an ill-fated attempt to round up a litter of escaped kittens at his uncle's vineyard up north. Somehow that leads into our opinions on the state of the world, which are similar in all the ways that matter but just different enough to make them worth debating. He's charming and kind, confident without being arrogant, and I think I must be the dullest person on the planet compared to him. And yet, for some reason, he listens intently to everything I say - more intently than anyone I know apart from James.

We're lingering over our dirty plates when Adrian says, "I could really go for some coffee. There's a Starbucks up the street, I think. Want to take a walk with me?"

"Yes," I say, maybe too quickly, but he just grins that dazzling grin again and holds the door open for me on our way out.

We stroll cautiously, side by side, along the narrow sidewalk, past the restaurants and the shopping centers and the Street of the Golden Lantern with the late afternoon sun beating down on us and a faint sea breeze blowing in from the harbor. When Adrian reaches for my hand, I let him take it. His grip is warm and strong and his fingers weave effortlessly into mine. My palm is sweating like I'm a teenager at a high school dance. Of course, the last time someone touched me like this, I _was_ a teenager at a high school dance. If he notices how I'm trembling, he's too polite to say anything about it.

He lets go of me to push open the door when we get to the Starbucks. I order up some iced mochas - only fair, since he insisted on paying for dinner - and we stake out a shady spot on the patio where we can watch the sun sink behind the pristine buildings and the perfect lines of palm trees to extinguish itself in the Pacific. We pick up right where we left off, our conversation spinning ever outward into dreams and plans and philosophies and all those little details that reveal our true selves to one another. _This date is going really well,_ I think distantly, and don't even bother to correct myself that I told James it wasn't really a date.

Hours later, the barista is sweeping the floors when Adrian stands up from his chair and stretches. "They're closing. I guess we have to go. Let me walk you back to your car."

He takes my hand again as we make our way back to the restaurant where I parked. He's talking enthusiastically about a movie he thinks I'd like, his free hand gesturing extravagantly into the neon-tinged darkness around us. When we reach my car, we linger beside it while he finishes what he's saying. We're standing even closer to each other than before, and I'm not sure who starts it but suddenly we're kissing.

When we finally separate, there's a pause, and I say, "That movie you were telling me about. Is it on Netflix?"

"Yeah," he says, a little out of breath.

I'm startled by my own boldness. "Do you want to come over and watch it sometime?"

"Definitely. When are you free?"

"I was thinking right now."

Adrian's brow wrinkles - not in displeasure so much as concern. "Are you sure? It's getting late."

"I don't mind. I don't have anywhere to be tomorrow. Do you?"

"I don't, it's just...I never do this."

"Me neither, if it helps to know that."

"Then we'll figure out it out together," he says, and kisses me once more before I let him into the car and drive both of us back to my place.

Needless to say, we don't watch the movie. The sex is good, probably. I don't have much to compare it to.

* * *

Afterwards, when I sleep. James is waiting for me on the beach like always. The difference is that this time, I'm not alone in my bed. I know I don't have to tell him. If I don't confess, if I walk and talk with him as if nothing is wrong, he'll never know where I've been and what I've done. But after all this time, I owe him more than that. "Adrian is with me right now," I say.

James understands my meaning immediately. His devastated expression is something I hoped I'd never see. "I wish you hadn't done that."

I can't name all of the emotions that rush into me when I hear that - confusion, and sadness, and anger, but less regret than I might have expected to feel. "You told me you were okay with this."

"I thought I was. I'm not."

"What am I supposed to do, James? I'm trying to be honest with you."

"So am I." He takes me by the shoulders and stares into my face. "Don't you see? You have a whole world outside this place when you're awake, but without you, I have nothing. I don't even know if I'd still exist if you forgot me. I want you to be happy, but I don't want to lose you, either. If you leave, what's left of me?"

I don't know what to say. James rarely speaks about himself; how long has he felt this way and never told me? I force myself to hold his gaze while I try to formulate a response. As I do, I see my own face reflected in miniature in his wide dark eyes. But it's not the face I know by heart from my bathroom mirror, or the face in the selfies I sent to Adrian. It's the self I recall from my own high school photographs - the teenage self I am no longer, but the only one that James ever would have known. Is that who I still am to him? An image of the past, fixed and unchanging? I thought we were still growing together. Have I always been this wrong?

Before I can decided how to respond, the dream starts falling apart around me. Something in my surroundings is pulling me unexpectedly back into wakefulness. I tumble out of sleep with James's mournful visage seared into my mind alongside the memory of the child in his eyes.

* * *

The sound that woke me was the toilet flushing in my bathroom. It's late night or perhaps early morning, and the sky beyond my windows is just beginning to go faintly grey. I fumble for the lamp on my bedside table. The bathroom door opens, and Adrian pads back into the bedroom. He sits down next to me on the bed as I wrestle my way out of the sheets in which I've become entangled. His brow is creased, his manner uncertain. Tenderly, he asks me, "Who's James?" The shock that I feel must show on my face, because he hastily adds, "You kept saying his name in your sleep."

I wouldn't be able to come up with a believable lie even if I wanted to. "My boyfriend." Then, seeing his startled look, I add: "From high school. He drowned at Salt Creek Beach when we were seventeen. I'm sorry. I haven't…"

The alarm fades from Adrian's face. He gets up from the bed, and at first I think he's about to leave. Instead, he crosses to where his jeans are draped over my desk chair and rummages around in his pockets. He comes back holding his wallet and opens it to show me a wrinkled headshot of a smiling, curly-haired woman. "This is Laura," he says. "My fiancee. She died in a crash on the Santa Ana Freeway. She's why I don't really like driving if I can help it. And why I changed jobs to something where I could help people who needed it. So it's just..."

All of a sudden, a lot of things make sense. "Did you ever tell Nicole about her?"

"It may have come up once or twice."

"That's what she thought we had in common. I'm sorry. I can't believe my sister sometimes."

He takes my hand and squeezes it. "I think we have more in common than just that."

"So do I."

We sit in silence for a while before Adrian says, "Do you want me to leave?"

"That's probably good. But I want to see you again. I mean, if you want to see me."

"I do. But maybe it's also a good idea if we slow down."

"I agree," I say, but I kiss him impulsively anyway and we both smile. "Do you need a ride somewhere? I can get dressed."

"Don't worry. I'll figure it out. Get some more sleep."

"I'll try. I'll text you when I wake up and we can make some plans."

"I'm looking forward to it."

I shut off the light after Adrian leaves the room. Soon I hear the front door closing behind him. I roll over and bury my face in the pillow that still smells like his hair. Sleep seems impossible, but it overtakes me again before I can think to fight it.

* * *

In my dream, I'm back on the beach, but this time I'm alone. The sun is lower in the sky than I've ever seen it in this place before. James isn't here. Was he ever really here to begin with? I can't be certain, but I'm not sure it matters now. I wonder if he'll appear and stop me as I begin to wade out into the surf, but he doesn't. The tide tugs insistently at my ankles as I move into deeper water. I turn my face toward the horizon and swim out until I can't touch the bottom. The waves wash over my head and I am diving, propelling myself toward the ocean floor, reaching for all the things that I have yet to grasp.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my beta reader [Mendeia](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/mendeia), who always helps my stories become their best selves.


End file.
